Vitality, or your state of strength, energy, and vibrance, is key to your health. Here’s why that matters and how to improve and prioritize it on a daily basis.
The term “vitality” is often used in the health and wellness space, but there’s not a lot of clarity around what it really means.
Vitality is the state of being strong, active and energetic. In a longer-term sense, vitality is “a power giving continuance of life.”
So what does this mean in terms of your health and well-being?
Well, more immediately, it’s exactly what the first definition states: it’s your ability to feel strong, active, and energetic on a day-to-day basis. As you age, vitality takes on a more deeply-rooted meaning for your health: it’s the quality of your endurance, vigor, resilience, and liveliness.
Thus, vitality is “vital” (so to speak) to your longevity and wellness.
Here are some of our experts’ top-recommended ways to improve your vitality for optimal short- and long-term health.
1. Improve your physical strength and conditioning with targeted workouts.
Starting in your 30s, your muscle mass naturally decreases (especially in women), causing you to lose strength, burn fewer calories, and lose stability. So, in order to bolster your vitality through the years, addressing your strength is imperative.
Focus your workouts on strength and conditioning. This doesn’t have to mean heavy weightlifting, though. Any kind of resistance training — bands, light weights, and even certain bodyweight exercises — will benefit you immensely by building lean muscle mass, strengthening your core stability, and increasing your body’s resilience.
Hint: strength training can seem overwhelming if you’ve never done it. Try booking a session with a personal trainer to get your bearings and figure out what exercises work for you and how to do them properly.
2. Try NAD+ therapy to slow the onset of age-related signs and symptoms.
One of the driving forces behind signs of aging (think: chronic illness, fatigue, weakness, cognitive function, and even lines and wrinkles) is the depletion of NAD+ in your system. NAD+ is a naturally-occurring compound in the body that’s central to cellular function.
As you get older, NAD+ naturally depletes, which causes the aforementioned symptoms. NAD+ replenishment, however, is safe and effective via IV therapy or injections, making it the perfect anti-aging tool.
Using NAD+ therapy regularly can reduce and prevent all of those signs of aging, so it’s an effective way to improve your vitality right now.
3. Focus on growing in self-awareness to increase your mental resilience.
Well-being is not complete without considering the mind and spirit alongside the body. Just as critical as physical resilience, mental resilience is one of the key aspects to living with true vitality.
One way to improve your mental resilience is by working on growing in self-awareness. The better you know yourself — your strengths, your weaknesses, your habits, your patterns of thought — the more you can understand what challenges you and how to overcome those obstacles. This is what will ultimately allow you to live in greater coherence, peace, and calmness.
The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), developed by Washington University psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Robert Cloninger and used widely by organizations such as the Anthropedia Institute, is a personality assessment tool that can help with this.
By measuring your innate temperament traits as well as your developed character traits side by side, the TCI gives you an incredibly detailed analysis of the emotional drives behind your habits and tendencies. This information can then be used to understand the areas in which you may want to grow.
The TCI and interpretations with a certified well-being coach are available at PALM Health as well.
4. Take steps to manage your day-to-day energy, mood, and stress levels.
Vitality isn’t just about prevention. Fluctuating day-to-day factors in how you’re generally feeling, like energy levels, mood, and stress, all impact your vitality as well, so it’s important to manage those consistently.
There are a multitude of ways to address your energy, mood, and stress. Here are a few:
- Eat plenty of foods rich in B vitamins (bananas, whole grains, fish, leafy greens).
- Take a daily multivitamin supplement that addresses those deficiencies (two great options: Mitocore or Multinutrient Complex).
- Be sure to get up and move around for at least 30-60 minutes a day, whether it’s a walk, a run, a strength workout, or a class.
- Develop strong stress management skills. A well-being coach or counselor can help you find the techniques that work best for you.
- Talk to your doctor if you have consistent issues with your energy, mood, and stress levels. They may recommend that you try a B12 injection or an IV treatment to treat nutritional deficiencies that underlie those symptoms.
Our favorite way to manage day-to-day energy, mood, and stress is with services and treatments that are specifically designed to address those areas of your vitality.
As you’ve seen, vitality has roots in many elements of your physical and mental health. Take a look at your day-to-day life. Do you feel active, strong, and energetic as you go through your work day, your tasks, and your social functions?
If not, it may be time to make some changes. At the end of the day, your current state will set the stage for your longer-term health as well. Do your future self (and present self) a favor and prioritize your vitality.
PALM Health is an innovative, whole-person medical and wellness company that helps people reach and maintain well-being. Our experts in medicine and wellness empower people to transform their health, become more resilient, and feel their personal best in mind and body.
